“I don’t, actually,” I said.
“Oh, well, I—thought you’d have a date with Ryan—”
“No. Apparently he’s working.”
Zachary cleared his throat again. I swear I heard him say, “Good.”
Ryan seemed to be working all the time—so much so that I’d barely seen him since he arrived in Seattle. I wasn’t too happy with him now that I suspected he’d had my car towed.
“Would you like to come over to my house?” I asked. It was a bold move. Val would have been proud.
“Yes—well, hmm, yes, but I have other plans,” Zachary said. He dealt with dead bodies, murderers, and unimaginable horrors every day—something I could never do—but he turned into a basket case when talking with women, or at least with me.
“I usually see my mother on Valentine’s Day,” he said.
My heart melted. I may love a man in a uniform, but a man who visits his mother on Valentine’s Day? That’s the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.
“That’s wonderful. I understand.”
“I could come by your house after I see her, if that would be acceptable. Can I come by at eight? I’ll bring dinner.”
“That would be lovely,” I said. I felt tingly all over and I didn’t think it was entirely because of the cold weather.
When the rain subsided, Zachary collapsed his umbrella, wiped his glasses on his sleeve, and put them back on. Bye-bye, Superman, at least for now.
“See you soon,” he said with a little swagger in his step. It was a major accomplishment: He had asked me out. Actually, I think I had asked him out, but at least it had happened. Now I’d have to wait and see what else would happen with the stern detective.
I glimpsed a red VW bug being hauled toward me by a tow truck. I was excited to see my car again, but as it approached, my heart sank: This wasn’t my car. The Ladybug was a convertible and only a few years old. This car didn’t have a ragtop and had been manufactured right around the year I was born, which was a lot longer ago than I liked to admit.
The driver, the size of a linebacker, got out of his truck and unlatched the gate in the chain-link fence.
“This your car, lady?”
“No, sorry, that’s not it. Do you have any other red Volkswagens back there?” I asked.
“You want to come back here? Maybe we can find you a car you’d like and we could make a deal,” the man said opening the gate a couple of feet.
“No, that’s okay.”
“Come on back, lady, I’ll make it worth your while.” He reached his meaty hand out through the gate’s opening, trying to pull me in.
“No. Thank you,” I said, slamming the gate shut on his hand and trotting back to the towing office, leaving the man gasping in pain. I hoped I didn’t have to come back here any time soon. I had the sinking realization that if my car was not here, then it had, in fact, been stolen.
“Well?” said the woman behind the glass.
“No. That’s not my car.”
“Sorry. Sometimes it’s better news to find out your car’s been towed. You want me to have the PD call you to file a stolen vehicle report?”
“Yes, please.” I headed out the door and called Tessa.
At least Ryan was off the hook. He hadn’t towed my car. But still, I wondered if he would have towed her if she had been there when he came by. And more importantly, where was The Ladybug?
“Bad news. It wasn’t my car,” I told Tessa as I climbed into her van.
“Che casino!” Tessa said, which in Italian roughly means “what a mess.”
“I guess my car was stolen after all.”
“It was probably some joyriding teenagers who stole it. I don’t think it’s practical to drive through the streets of Seattle looking for The Ladybug, do you? You should file a police report and call your insurance company. Maybe someone will find her abandoned somewhere.”
We drove to Tessa’s glass studio, Fremont Fire, which was a short drive from the towing office. Two of Tessa’s helpers, Dylan and Nick, were making glass beads in the back of the studio, their table-mounted torches emitting foot-long orange and blue flames. Dylan finished his bead, placed it in the kiln, and turned off his torch.
“Hey, Tessa. Hey, Jax,” Dylan said, pulling off his glasses.
Nick completed his bead and put it in the kiln as well. “What’s up? You ladies look upset.”
“My car was stolen,” I said.
“Oh man, that sucks,” said Dylan, pushing his shaggy hair off his face.
My phone started ringing inside my purse. I rummaged through my handbag, removing my rejected necklace and putting it on the counter as I continued to search for my phone. I finally fished it out from the bottom of the bag and answered.
“Hello, Ms. O’Connell, this is Lt. Hayashi. I understand your car has been stolen,” the woman said.
“Thanks for calling. Did you find my car?”
“No. I’m calling to get a statement from you regarding the details of your vehicle and the circumstances of the theft.”
I told the officer all I knew and hung up the phone, then sat down on a stool and rested my head in my hands. What was I going to do if The Ladybug never turned up? Tessa pulled one of my hands toward her and pressed a fistful of Hershey’s Kisses into it.
“Chocolate. Eat it. It’s medicinal. It can’t bring your car back, but it may help you cope a little bit.”
“Thanks, Tessa, you’re the best,” I said pulling off the silver foil from one of the candies.
“What have you got there?” Tessa asked, noticing the necklace that had been returned from the gallery sitting on the counter next to me.
“It’s a piece of jewelry that Susan at the 7th Street Glass Gallery didn’t want.” It was no wonder she rejected it, the beads didn’t look good together. There were too many colors and clashing patterns.
“Maybe you should take it apart and try again,” Tessa suggested, looking down at the necklace as if it were a patient in need of medical attention.
“I’ve been thinking about doing that. I tried to make it work, but I think the best thing I can do is simply take it apart and sell each of the beads. It seems to me that each of the beads is worth more separately than they are together as a whole necklace.”
“Yeah, like those chop shops,” Nick said. Dylan nodded in agreement.
“What do you mean by ‘chop shops?’” I asked.
“These guys, they steal cars for what’s under the hood. They gut the cars and sell them for parts—they’re worth more than the whole car,” Nick said.
“Yeah, you could do that with the necklace, chop it up, and sell the beads,” Dylan said.
“Dylan, you’re brilliant!” I said, giving him a high-five. “Nick, you too!” I gave him a high-five too.
“We are?” the two young men said.
“You most definitely are! The Ladybug may be at a chop shop—already being sliced up to be sold off bit by bit,” I said. “Tessa, we’ve got to find her before it’s too late.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” Tessa said.
“You know, when I was living down on The Ave, there were these guys that dealt with a lot of stolen cars, especially those German ones like your VW,” Nick said.
“Can you tell me where?” I asked.
“There’s a Jiffy Mart on 40th Avenue and a condemned office building next to it. Just down the alley between the two buildings you’ll find the shop. But these guys are pretty bad dudes. You should probably leave it to the cops.”
“Will you come with us?” I asked Nick.
“Sorry, I gotta stay away from there. The cops show up and I’m toast—I’ve had too many run-ins to risk it.” When I met Nick he was living on the streets. Now that he and Dylan were sharing an apartment and Nick was working at Tessa’s studio, he seemed to
be on the right track.
“What do you mean by ‘us?’” Tessa said suspiciously.
“You and me, Tessa. Come on, let’s go. I don’t have any other way to get there.”
Tessa didn’t try to dissuade me from going on this foolish mission. She must’ve known there was no way I’d sit by waiting for pieces of my beloved car to show up on the automotive black market. She drove like a madwoman toward The Ave, a dodgy neighborhood where you could get anything you wanted, legal or otherwise, with no questions asked. With her beat-up van and her crazy driving, she was hell-on-wheels. Jiffy Mart was at the end of the street next to the rundown building, just like Nick had described.
“Turn there, that’s the alley,” I said. Tessa turned down the dark narrow alley, driving slowly. The rolling door entrance to an auto shop appeared in front of us.
“I’m stopping here. That way we can sneak up, peek in the door, and if The Ladybug is in there, we can call the police,” Tessa whispered.
“I don’t think anyone can hear us inside your van,” I said at full volume.
“Shhh. Let’s leave the car here,” she said. We tried to open the doors, but the alley was too narrow for us to squeeze out.
“Let’s drive up to the doors in a surprise attack,” I said.
“No. No attacking.”
“Right. I mean, we’re just going to drive up and park in that wide spot by the rolling door. Maybe we can tell them that we’re in the market for some spare auto parts.”
“Do we look like the kind of people who are looking for hot car parts?”
“Come on, Tessa, we’ve got nothing to lose, right?”
“I can think of several things we could lose, starting with our lives.”
“What did you think we were going to do?” I asked. “Let’s go!”
Tessa gritted her teeth, started the van, and punched the accelerator. We slid to a stop next to the garage behind a black Porsche. We jumped out of the car and crept toward the rolling door. Rap music was thumping at ear-damaging levels inside. No one heard us above the music; it didn’t look like anyone was working in the shop.
And there she was—The Ladybug was on a hydraulic lift six feet above us.
“Dammit! Tessa, how do we get her down?”
“We don’t. We leave and call the police. That was the plan, remember?”
A man in grubby coveralls came out from behind the lift, a smoldering cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and an unlit blowtorch in one of his hands.
“What the hell are you two doing here? You’re not allowed in here,” the man shouted.
“We’re not leaving without my car,” I said, as Tessa tugged on the back of my shirt trying to pull me out of the garage.
“Sorry, we were looking for the ice cream shop,” Tessa said as she backed up.
“No we weren’t. We were looking for my car. And we found it.”
“Listen lady, this is my car now,” the man said taking several steps toward us. I didn’t retreat. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to do this!” I reached in my purse, grabbed my bottle of Chanel No. 6 and sprayed it in his face. His cigarette burst into flames and fell from his lips.
“Argh!” the man shouted, spitting out expletives as his blowtorch crashed to the concrete floor and rolled toward us. The man wiped his face with his grimy hands, feeling his forehead where most of his eyebrows had been singed off when the cigarette caught fire. “Pretty funny. Is that the best you got?”
Tessa grabbed the blowtorch and pressed the ignition button while touching the tip to the glowing remains of the cigarette on the garage floor.
“No, this is the best we’ve got,” she said, expertly wielding the torch with a foot-long flame pulsing from its tip. She looked at him with her fiercest glare, the one she usually reserved for her teenaged daughters. “I think you should take a seat. Right there.” Shocked, the man showed her his hands, greasy palms outward, and sat down slowly on the floor while Tessa stood over him. She’d always been bossy, and that was a good thing right now.
I called the police. An officer was at the garage in a matter of minutes. He took our statements while his partner cuffed the eyebrow-less man and took him to the police car.
“You ladies really should have left this to the police. It’s dangerous to take matters like this into your own hands,” the officer said. Detective Grant was going to be unhappy to hear I’d gone to such extremes to get my car back. I’d have to figure out how to tell him tonight when he came over. It was possible he’d find out before then, but I didn’t want to think about that.
“Ms. Ricci, you were very brave to subdue that man. Ms. O’Connell, I’ll make sure you get your car back as soon as possible. It looks like it hasn’t been damaged. We’ve found plenty of evidence to put this crook and his crew out of business for a while,” the officer said.
“Come on, Jax, I’ll take you home,” Tessa said as she put her arm around me and guided me toward her van. I glanced in a garbage can as we left the garage. The beads from the tray I’d left in the trunk of The Ladybug were in it. I grabbed the can on our way out the door. I would fish out the beads and clean them up later. They had taken me days to make and I wasn’t going to abandon them. I looked back at The Ladybug, still suspended above the garage floor. She was going to be okay. And so was I.
Tessa dropped me off at my house, giving me a little double-honk on the van’s horn as she took off.
As I mounted the steps of my Craftsman-style duplex, Val ripped open her front door, situated just inches from mine.
“Honey! I’m so glad you’re home! Your hunky boyfriend Ryan—”
“Not really my boyfriend—”
“He stopped by on his way to work and left you this bottle of champagne and a bouquet of flowers.” Val flashed her best smile, the one that said, “I can help you drink that.”
“I think we should drink this right now,” I said. I was ready for a drink.
“Great idea!”
Gumdrop was waiting for me on the kitchen counter when I opened my front door. Val was close behind me.
“How did you get up there?” I asked my cat.
“Yellllooo?” Gumdrop asked with a plaintive howl.
“Okay, okay, just one cube.” I pulled the pink tray of Gummie’s special catnip ice cubes from the freezer and used a knife to flick a cube into his bowl. He launched himself off the counter, landing right on top of his dish. My furry drug addict kitty writhed around on the floor with his green ice cube, as usual.
As I put the flowers in a multicolored art glass vase, Val popped the cork on the champagne bottle in a well-practiced move that didn’t spill a drop. She grabbed two champagne glasses, settled onto my sofa, and poured us each a glass.
“Cheers, sweet-cheeks!” Val said holding up her flute.
“Cheers!” I said clinking glasses with her. “No plans for Valentine’s Night? What happened to your date?” I asked.
“Oh, he stood me up! He said he owns an auto shop down on The Ave, so I guess he had to work late,” Val said, taking a sip of sparkling wine. “So, it’s just us gals tonight.”
I was pretty sure Mr. No Eyebrows was in jail by now, and I was proud I’d had a lot to do with that.
“Actually, I have a last-minute date,” I said.
“What?! Do. Not. Tell. Me! Is it Zach? Because he’s so hot, in that serious Clark Kent sort of way.”
“It is. It’s Zachary. But he won’t be here for a while,” I said.
“Oh, goodie! We wouldn’t want this champagne to go flat,” Val said, pouring herself another glass. “Make sure you wear something sexy that shows off your curves. Oh, and use the Chanel No. 6.”
“I promise I will,” I said, fibbing. I was never going to wear Chanel No. 6. I still smelled vaguely of the vile scent after spraying i
t during The Ladybug’s rescue. I told Val that my car had been stolen but that the police had found her, safe and sound, which was another fib. Someday I’d tell her how her perfume broke up of a ring of auto thieves and saved The Ladybug from certain dismantlement. But, I’d never confess that I was the reason her new boyfriend missed his date with her on Valentine’s Day.
“Now you’ve got to get ready for Zach. What are you two going to do?” she said, splitting the last of the champagne between our two glasses.
“He’s bringing dinner. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“You’d better,” she said with a sly smile. Once the champagne was gone, Val gave me a little air kiss and sashayed toward the door. “Have fun. A lot of fun. I mean, really, real—”
“Good-bye, Val. Thanks for the advice,” I said as I shut the door before she could add any more “reallys.”
As I rushed to my bedroom to get ready for my date, my cell phone rang. I answered, distractedly, without looking at my caller ID—a big mistake.
“Hello, beautiful.” It was Ryan. Oh dear. “Sorry I’ve been out of touch. I’ll make it up to you—big time. Did you get my presents?”
“I did. Thanks for the champagne and flowers. They were a great way to end the day after all I’ve been through.”
“What happened?” Ryan asked.
“My car was stolen. Actually, I saw you down in Pioneer Square around the time it went missing. You were working with a tow truck and taking away illegally parked cars.”
“A red VW?”
“Do you remember it from Portland?”
“No, I was just about to have it towed. It was about three feet in a red zone,” Ryan said. “I went to call a tow truck and by the time I got back it was gone.”
“Right. Because a thief stole it. But, if you knew it was my car, you wouldn’t have towed it, right?”
“Sorry Jax, the law is the law. You can’t go breaking the parking regulations—not on my watch.”
I certainly was learning a few things about Ryan. I wouldn’t want him to break the law on my behalf, but he could have at least called me to give me a heads up that my car was about to be towed.
Be Still My Beading Heart Page 2